


bleed me dry

by nohomies (kameo_chan)



Category: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Drama, F/M, Gen, Sibling Incest, Squick Alert Yo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 09:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kameo_chan/pseuds/nohomies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The years have tarnished her beyond repair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bleed me dry

The snow is cold, so bitter bitter cold as it whips against her skin in driving flurries. It dulls her mind and blinds her sight, leaving her numb against the harsh jolt of the saddle's pommel and the greedy body pressed up behind her. And she is afraid, sweet Jesu! So afraid. 

From behind her comes her mother's words, a howl carried on the wind: "Avenge us!" She wants to turn around, to look at her home and her mother and father, her people. But in her heart she already knows it is too late. There is only Finn screaming at her from up ahead and the snow flaying her to the bone and the bitter taste in her mouth that lets her know that she is still alive, wretchedly so. 

Her tears are like poison, rolling fat and thick down her cheeks like a flood only to be plucked away by the breathless speed of the horse bearing her away from all she holds dear. She cries and cries and finds that she cannot stop. 

\--- 

She is supposed to be a maiden still, by her village's custom. She woud've been betrothed to the blacksmith's son in the fall and married to him the spring after. Now, now she lies as still as a dead sparrow, willing away the wet patch beneath her night gown. Red and white, white and red mixed on the sheets beneath her and she does not cry like she desperately wants to. 

Beside her, her new husband snores fitfully in his sleep, besotted on wine and lust. How she hates him! He is as loathsome as he is brutish and if she could, she would drive a dagger through his heart as surely as he'd driven inside of her, stripping her of her innocence and laying her bare, bleeding and broken inside. 

She turns on her side as bile rises in her throat and vomits on the cold stone floor before sitting up and stripping off her soiled garb. Naked and shivering, she pads around her marriage bed and stares at her lord's face. In it she sees only driving snow. So she sets her heart and does not hesitate, sliding his pillow from beneath his head. He does not stir. 

It is the easiest thing in the world. He does not struggle, does not protest. Not like she had when he'd taken her. When she is sure he is dead she sits for a moment, stunned by her own daring. And then she weeps quietly into her hands, cursing her mother before calling the guards. 

\--- 

She is just shy of her eighteenth summer when she tiptoes into her brother's chambers. She has been queen for some time now, and she has taken from her enemies everything. Her homeland is black and barren with her vengeance, lifeless in the wake of her anger and shame. 

And it is her shame that drives her to do this. Because Finn has always been there for her, has always given her what she wants. Even as children he has always been hers, and hers alone. 

"Sister?" he questions groggily when she slips in beneath the sheets next to him. And oh, how she has longed for this. 

"Hold me," she whispers, laying a hand on her brother's chest. He is a ghost in the moonlight, hair pale and lifeless against his skin and she loves him for it all the more. He is the only thing in her bleak world she can rely on not to harm or hurt her. "Please Finn." 

And she cries when he rolls atop her, settling against her as though he were meant to fit, warm in all the places she has been cold for so long. She cries when he enters her, soft and sweet and so unsure, petting her hair and soothing her with open mouthed kisses. There is no red here, no curse to remind her of her duty. Only the white of his skin against hers, burning a crescendo of fire that consumes all the awful years in between now and the childhood she still clings to so desperately. 

When it is over, she presses his hand to her lips and vows to keep him safe, and Finn echoes her, somber and wraith-like. She binds them that night, in her soul and in her heart, and for the first time in years, the emptiness in her chest fills with something bright and hopeful. 

\--- 

She finds the mirror in her third kingdom. It sings to her like a siren call, seeming to mock her when she tries to ignore it. 

_Who is the fairest?_ it whispers at her when she passes it. _You are_ , it croons when she stands in front of it. Over and over, incessant and unrelenting, it keeps drawing her like a blade from the sheath. 

"What do you want of me!" she demands of it one day when finally its pestering grows too much. 

And it is then that the mirror makes itself know to her. "I come only to bring homage to you, my queen. You, who are indeed the fairest one of all." 

It is then that she is forever enamored by its spell. 

\--- 

Finn begins to find his pleasures elsewhere in time. He still comes to her when there is little else sport to be had, but even then she resents him for his treachery. She is not so simple to think that power comes without a price. She knows it, knows full well how high and terrible are the costs of the rewards she reaps. But she cannot stop. 

The mirror urges her with each new kingdom swept beneath her feet and her brother's infedility drives her rage like a thunderstorm that leaves everything dead or dying in its wake. She does not know how many lives her beauty has come to cost her, and she has long since stopped caring. 

Her heart is as bleak and black as her magic nowadays, and her tears have long since dried to nothing more than memory and dust. 

\---

Finn's death is an unbearable agony. It is hell itself, and she reaches out blindly, convulses like a dying thing - _like Finn_ \- before she makes her decision. Her mouth tastes like gall after, and she presses a hand to her breast as the last piece of her heart crumbles and fades. She has nothing left now, not even her beauty. The thought snatches at her with terror-laced fingers. 

"Forgive me, brother," she whispers to the flagstones beneath her. She knows that he cannot, not now. Not ever again. But it doesn't keep her from chanting it over and over, like a prayer. "Forgive me, Finn." 

\--- 

"You cannot have my heart," Snow White tells her as she sheds a single tear. And she wants to smile at her, fairest of the fair, the red of her own blood stark on the white sheen of Snow White's mail. 

She wants to tell her that in the end, a woman's heart means nothing, because it is as fragile as a snow flake and as easily corrupted and destroyed. 

But she has not the words nor the time left in this world, and, she supposes, she never had. In another life, Snow White could have been a daughter she could have loved and cherished as her own. But the world is a cruel and desolate place, and there is no place in it for frivolities and daydreams. 

She is going blind and numb, the snow drawing in around her like a curtain. _I am going home_ , Ravenna thinks as she breathes out her last. _I am finally going home._

**Author's Note:**

> A short little character study. I quite liked Ravenna. She was such a tragic character, despite her egomania and sociopathy, and I find - disturbingly - that I can relate to her easier than I can to Snow White. But then again, I have always liked the baddies more. What can I say? *shrugs*


End file.
